Death poems
/ page 532 of 560 /
To Leonide Massine in Cleopatra
© Siegfried Sassoon
O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour,
Leaping along the verge of death and night,
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight
Four long years past, discovering pride and power.
To a Very Wise Man
© Siegfried Sassoon
IFires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.
Your soul is full of cities with dead names,
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone
Stretcher Case
© Siegfried Sassoon
He woke; the clank and racket of the train
Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain.
Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again.
Battalion-Relief
© Siegfried Sassoon
FALL in! Now get a move on. (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village,
Out to the flat rich country, green with June...
And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
The Investiture
© Siegfried Sassoon
If I were there wed snowball Death with skulls;
Or ride away to hunt in Devils Wood
With ghosts of puppies that we walked of old.
But youre alone; and solitude annuls
Our earthly jokes; and strangely wise and good
You roam forlorn along the streets of gold.
The Last Meeting
© Siegfried Sassoon
Because the night was falling warm and still
Upon a golden day at Aprils end,
I thought; I will go up the hill once more
To find the face of him that I have lost,
And speak with him before his ghost has flown
Far from the earth that might not keep him long.
Bombardment
© Siegfried Sassoon
Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death.
Remorse
© Siegfried Sassoon
Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash and spouting crash,--each instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
France
© Siegfried Sassoon
She triumphs, in the vivid green
Where sun and quivering foliage meet;
And in each soldiers heart serene;
When death stood near them they have seen
The radiant forests where her feet
Move on a breeze of silver sheen.
The Troops
© Siegfried Sassoon
Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Ancestors
© Siegfried Sassoon
Behold these jewelled, merchant Ancestors,
Foregathered in some chancellery of death;
Calm, provident, discreet, they stroke their beards
And move their faces slowly in the gloom,
Middle-Ages
© Siegfried Sassoon
I heard a clash, and a cry,
And a horseman fleeing the wood.
The moon hid in a cloud.
Deep in shadow I stood.
Today
© Siegfried Sassoon
This is To-day, a child in white and blue
Running to meet me out of Night who stilled
The ghost of Yester-eve; this is fair Morn
The mother of To-morrow. And these clouds
Haunted
© Siegfried Sassoon
Evening was in the wood, louring with storm.
A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool
And baked the channels; birds had done with song.
Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon,
Or willow-music blown across the water
Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill.
The Heritage
© Siegfried Sassoon
For even as this, our joy not long may live
Perfect; and most in change the heart can trace
The miracle of life and human things:
All we have held to destiny we give;
Dawn glimmers on the soul-forsaken face;
Not we, but others, hear the bird that sings.
An Old French Poet
© Siegfried Sassoon
When in your sober mood my body have ye laid
In sight and sound of things beloved, woodland and stream,
And the green turf has hidden the poor bones ye deem
No more a close companion with those rhymes we made;
Enemies
© Siegfried Sassoon
He stood alone in some queer sunless place
Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he longed
For days he might have lived; but his young face
Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged
Round him the hulking Germans that I shot
When for his death my brooding rage was hot.
David Cleek
© Siegfried Sassoon
I cannot think that Death will press his claim
To snuff you out or put you off your game:
Youll still contrive to play your steady round,
Though hurricanes may sweep the dismal ground,
And darkness blur the sandy-skirted green
Where silence gulfs the shot you strike so clean.
Memory
© Siegfried Sassoon
When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
A Mystic As Soldier
© Siegfried Sassoon
I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.
